Benderspink

Brett Dollar, 2009

During my month at Benderspink I worked full time and assisted in the day-to-day operation of a small film production and talent management company in West Hollywood, CA.  This included a wide range of responsibilities, including reading and evaluating script submissions, answering phones, doing personal errands for the producers and management agents at the company, researching the content and ownership rights of properties that might be adapted for film, and pitching my own story ideas at the weekly creative meetings.

This internship suited my interests very well.  Since I want to be a writer, it was illuminating to get an inside perspective on a company that both develops scripts for production purposes and manages working writers.  Reading some of the clients’ work alongside scripts that are in production and blind submission scripts has given me an idea of what industry professionals look for in a script across a variety of genres and styles.  The disappointing part of this is the importance that the industry places on proven formula and commercial potential over art, but it eventually became clear to me that there is still an important place for creativity and innovation in this commercially driven atmosphere.  There are fortunes to be made for the next interesting twist on a genre or recombinant story.

By all accounts I performed quite well as an intern, and I was invited back to Benderspink for the summer.  I definitely improved and learned a lot throughout the month, though.  Initially I was nervous on the phone, slightly intimidated by the system of relaying calls and clarifying essential information, but I adapted quickly and I was very comfortable speaking with clients and producers from other companies by the end of January.  I also quickly learned to research and condense stories, characters, franchises, etc. into “loglines”-quick, catchy, one-to-two sentence summaries-to be reviewed by producers for remake/development potential.  Blind submissions are accepted or rejected initially based on the logline that the writer submits, so the ability to boil down story into a simple but engaging summary is an important skill for a writer in order to get people interested in reading your script.

Living in Los Angeles was an important part of my internship experience.  For all practical purposes you have to be in LA to build a career in the film industry, but it’s a strange place and I wasn’t sure whether I could handle it.  There’s way too much traffic, too many impatient and aggressive drivers, too many superficial people, and not enough alternative transportation options or bikes.  Yet, as with most big cities, there is just about everything and anything you could want.  With a little searching you can find any subculture or community of people-I even found other vegan cyclists, eventually.  Then there’s the weather, with constant sun and highs in the 80s in January, and the laid back attitude you find throughout the west.  Ultimately I fell in love with Los Angeles, if only in comparison to the northeast.

In the end, this internship has allowed me to see the reality of trying to make it in the movie business and glimpse my own potential for doing so.  While I had previously taken comfort from my wide range of interests and potential for pursuing a variety of post-graduate options, I am now inspired and highly motivated to cultivate my writing skills and work my way up in Hollywood.

Jared Rosenberg, 2010

Industry Revelations:

–       Networking is essential – The majority of any industry professional’s day seems to be staying in touch with their ever-expanding network of people and keeping those connections open. This point is particularly crucial for anyone trying to break into the industry.

–       As a result of recent economic woes, the industry has shifted its production focus towards pre-scripted and pre-produced material like novels, comics, or pulp magazine serials. The reasoning behind such shift is that investors are more likely to fund material that has already proven to have some marketable ability and fan base rather than an original screenplay.

–       Grad school is unnecessary and over-rated. This point applied particularly to writers. In Chris Bender’s and JC Spink’s opinion, one’s time and money would be better spent gaining real-world, industry experience and writing. (See next point) This assertion is supported by the fact that two other interns have their Master’s in screenwriting, and they were doing the exact same internship I was…

–       Write all the time. According to the Benders, most writers do not find their “voice, their style, until they have written at least five or six screenplays. For them, it is at that point that you actually become a writer, and so the best thing for a person to do is simply write, and write, and write… until you have found your voice.

–       “It’s just business.” – A studio might stall your project or have you replaced. It’s not personal, it’s just business. Usually it just it simply needs a fresh perspective to take the project in a new direction.

–        Star-power/business trumps skill/art – At one point, during casting for a film, everyone (the producers, director, casting director, etc.) had narrowed the choice down to Michael Fassbender and Matthew Goode. Everyone agreed that Fassbender was better tailored to the role in every way (performance, physically, etc.), but they ultimately chose Goode because they felt he had more star-power and would be more likely to attract an audience (especially with his upcoming performance in Watchmen). And there it is: a quintessential case of business trumping art.

Final Reflections:

Benderspink is a fantastic place for one to intern. Since it is a relatively small company, it maintains a wonderfully intimate and relaxed workplace environment. All the employees, even the heads of the company, knew the interns by name, and would periodically share some industry insight or opinion with them. Also, while interns elsewhere did little more than make coffee, I had the opportunity to engage in meaningful work, reading scripts, sitting in on meetings, and even pitching out new ideas to company executives. When it came time to leave, I went in to JC Spink’s office to say goodbye, and talked to him briefly about the future.  He sat me down and said, “Look, come back and work for us this summer. After you graduate, come see us again, and we’ll get you a job.” If that’s not the mark of a successful internship, then I do not know what is. Moreover, I returned to school with a new and better understanding of exactly how this industry conducts business. I think that sometimes at Middlebury there is a tendency to treat the film industry as some sort of obscure, abstract entity, and this past month as certainly helped to refine that image for me. Bottom line, I cannot wait to return to Benderspink this summer

Contact the Career Services Office or visit www.benderspink.com for more information on this internship.